I went to Germany and Prague for my Political Science class. There was person on the trip who seemed pleasant until we got to Frankfurt. I had bought Kinder surprise chocolate eggs. They are not available in the states so I had to try them. I had a bunch of them in a shopping bag and the bag was next to me. I was using my tablet when I noticed out of the corner of my eye the thief was helping herself to an egg. I told her to put it back and ask. She did put it back. Later at the hotel we were going to be rooming together. So the whole time we were in that city she was taking my things. Toothpaste, shampoo, conditioner and body wash were always being taken. The final straw was 20 euros went missing from my jacket pocket. I asked her if she saw it and she confessed to taking it. The next day we were leaving so I told the guide I can’t room with the thief and I did not share a room with her for the rest of the trip. She had to give me the money back. 0802-14
I’m surprised she admitted to taking the 20 Euros.
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I’m amazed she admitted to all the thievery, glad you got all your things back!
On vacation a few years back, we decided to hang by the pool at our hotel.
While the kids were in the pool, I decided to walk out to the corner and get the newspaper for my husband and I to read over our coffee.
I was in my swimsuit (a one piece with a little skirt, not as thin as I used to be!) and I feel “eyes” on me.
I look up to see two men in a delivery truck waiting for the light to change, I smiled and said “Good Morning!”
Their response as the light changed and they pulled away?
“MOO! MOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!”
I grabbed the papers and burst into tears as I walked back to my family….Thanks a LOT, you jerks….
I don’t feel bad enough about my weight as it is!!!
And last year, my family and I were strolling on the boardwalk and I notice a group of three or four teenage boys “checking out” my daughter.
They weren’t being rude or offensive, but I could hear what they were saying about her.
I got in front of her, stopped in front of them and said, “I think she’s very beautiful, too, but she is ELEVEN!!!
They all turned bright red and beat it away from me in a real hurry!
I’ve become second mom to a teen that has “a great body” (well proportioned and easily attractive to guys). She also looks like she is an adult. Guys in their 20’s start eyeing her and flirting with her. I keep a close eye on them to watch that they don’t take things to far, thought I find myself wanting to be “uncool” and say from the start “she’s to young for you!”.
I got kicked out of my house when I was 17, because I was dating a 24year old.
Good Catholic girl and all, I was “in loooove”, and was rebelling BIG time.
Of course over the next two years, discovered on my own the dude was bad news, and ended it.
I’m a big believer in karma, I’m waiting for my bad choices to come back around and kick me squarely in the butt!
If this ever happens to my niece in my presence, I won’t be saying, “she’s too young for you.” I’ll be shouting “Pedophile! He’s a pedophile!” at the top of my lungs, while following him around and pointing.
Maybe rude, but seriously, it IS pedophilic behavior, and it HAS TO STOP!
what would really help would be if fashion magazines, etc. had a ban on using models under 18. It’s very difficult to understand that you’re looking at a 12 year old, when magazines (and TV, etc.) are filled with 14-year-olds made up and sexualized to look adult.
Agree completely, with young girls made up and dressed like much older women.
I thought getting my daughter Seventeen magazine would be nice, and harmless…..boy, was I wrong!!!
And don’t even get me started on Kendall and Kylie Jenner!
The boys on the boardwalk were (best guess) 14/15, and my “She’s ELEVEN!” did the trick nicely, but I have noticed MEN giving my daughter a second look.
I have given quite a few men the “raised eyebrow” and scowl, while grabbing my girls hand and walking away.
I swear these moooing jerks are a universal constant.
I’m a very large woman and I walk in several 5Ks a year.
Even when I’m out of town on business I try to walk 1 – 2 miles a day.
And in every city I’ve ever been in, I’ve encountered some jerk who can’t resist yelling some sort of fat insult out of his window as he drives by.
Unfortunately, jerks like that usually don’t stick around for a reply, but assuming someone does, I find that it helps (me) to say, in a mock surprised voice “Oh thanks, I really, really didn’t know I was fat. Thank you sooo much for giving me this information that I clearly lacked!” There are many nasty things you could add, mostly about how crappy their jobs evidently are, and how they are obviously pretty stupid, but that would be just rude.
Mostly I content myself with knowing that I only had a brief encounter with them.
They, on the other hand, are stuck with a jerk 24/7, 365, with no hope of escape.
Everywhere they go, there’s a jerk.
Plus, I know it’s not strictly a fat thing. Ask any male runner and he’ll tell stories of these same sort of jerks yelling gay slurs as they drive by.
I’ve also heard one of my older son’s friends ask “say…how old is your sister now?”
My son replied, “Don’t even THINK about it dude!!!”
I’m not sure there’s anything I HATE more than the people in this world who think it’s ok to make fun of someone, or make insanely hurtful comments to someone like this. No matter how many times you tell yourself “who cares if those jerks think I’m fat?” – it still hurts!! I’ll take a wild guess that the morons in question were no male models themselves – yet they tried so hard to ruin your day by being mean. I truly hope you didn’t let it ruin the rest of your vacation – and maybe, just maybe they drove that truck into a ditch later in the day due to a nice Karmic smack upside the head!!
Nice job teaching those boys that they should be extra careful when talking about how hot a young girl is!
You should have noted what company they worked for (I assume it was in the truck?) And reported them.
I’m so sorry about the delivery creeps!
@Everyone who commented: Thank you!!! 🙂
Yes, I know I’m fat, I’ve got eyes and mirrors, but I sure don’t need it pointed out to me.
That little stunt with the “moo-ing” REALLY hurt my feelings, and being a beach town, a LOT of people walking by heard it. It was humiliating.
To my husband and three son’s credit, when I came back crying (the ugly cry I’m afraid), they all ran out to the curb to see if the truck was up the block….then spent the rest of our vacation eyeing up every truck we saw saying, “Is that THEM?!?”
I used to be very thin, and am very self conscious about my weight.
After four kids, and some medical issues where my meds are the culprit for some of my weight, that stunt hurt my heart for a very long time.
Thanks again for all the nice and supportive comments!!!
….Oh, and no, neither one of the morons from the truck would be asked to grace the cover of GQ.
My daughter is now 13, and while beautiful and very tall and thin, hasn’t begun to develop yet.
I will say none of the boys said anything crass, (I would’ve pointed them out to her dad/brothers in that case), but I was gobsmacked that they were checking her out.
I had a good laugh a few weeks ago, after teaching my girl to do her make up, snapped some photos with my phone.
When we went to my folks house, I showed them the pics of their “little girl”, and my mom sighed and said “ok….which one of your boys is dating her and does she go to school with him?”
I said, “uh, mom….that’s your GRANDDAUGHTER!!!”
“WHAT?!? NO!!! REALLY?!?”
If there is one thing I cannot abide, it’s a thief. The very idea of taking something that doesn’t belong to me is so anathema as to be almost foreign. Some people! When my aunt and uncle lived in Germany (he was in the Army), there was a woman in their apartment building who would steal people’s clothes from the laundry room. Everyone knew she was doing it, but nobody seemed to be able to prove it. One day another tenant knocked on the thief’s door and told her, “My favorite blouse has gone missing from the laundry. I know you have it. If I see it on you, it’s coming off. If I can’t wear it, you certainly can’t.” And lo! the blouse turned up that very day. I’ll never understand why people do things like this. And I’m with Admin–I’m surprised your roommate confessed to taking the money. Wow.
Years ago I read a story in the New Yorker that made me laugh.
An American man was visiting England. He was at the train station and bought a package of cookies to munch on as he read his newspaper and waited for the train.
The American man is sitting on a bench and he’s joined by an English fellow.
The English fellow is also reading a newspaper when he reaches down, grabs a cookie from the American’s package and eats it!
The American is gobsmacked by the blatant stealing of his cookie. So he uses exaggerated movements as he reaches into the cookie packet, grabs a cookie, and eats it while starting at the side of the English fellow’s head.
The English fellow snorts, stares right back at the American and reaches in to help himself to the last cookie and eats it while staring the American in the face.
The train arrives. The English fellow storms off.
The American guy folds up his paper and opens his briefcase to put it away, only to find his package of cookies sitting in his briefcase.
The American guy is mortified.
The English fellow must have thought it absolutely absurd the way the American was so aggressively eating the English fellow’s cookies as if daring him to say something.
That story is awesome, made me laugh out loud.
I’d pay good money to have seen the look on the American’s face when he discovered his cookies!
It’s a funny story but I’m pretty sure it’s an urban legend. It appears in one of the Hitchhikers’ books by Douglas Adams.
That must have been where I read it!
It’s been so long that I thought it was a short story in the New Yorker.
But I did read the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and its squeals when I was in high school. So my brain just misattributed where I read it.
http://www.snopes.com/crime/safety/cookies.asp
I believe the late Douglas Adams also published this story as his own work.
There are those that just never learn about boundaries and NO. Special snowflakes. Sounds like this woman didn’t get the idea that if it’s there it’s not hers. Glad at least that she ‘fessed up to taking the money and in the end you lost so little. Afraid more of this is in the wings…
It sounds like this person who took OP’s items doesn’t even understand the concept of “stealing” and that it is wrong. From an etiquette standpoint, it sounds like the OP handled the situation well, refusing to be a victim, but not creating a lot of drama for everyone else on the trip.
I’m surprised she admitted it too. I was also surprised that she stole money — I figured she’d be the type who takes some of your consumable stuff but doesn’t consider herself a thief because she never stole money.
My sister once shared an RV with several people, including a woman whom she didn’t know before then, but the woman was nice, no problem. The woman and my sister were both sharing the mirror over the sink to put on their makeup, since quarters were tight. My sister finished her makeup first and washed her hands. The woman remarked upon it, saying she had shared a hotel room recently with three other women (work conference thing) and when she washed her hands after applying her makeup, the other three women had teased her and made fun of her for being a “germ-freak” for the rest of their stay. This woman said she was so relieved to see my sister wash the makeup off of her own hands; she had begun to wonder if she was the only one to do that. My sister said she told this woman that those other women had been plain rude.
Those other women were more than rude. They were scary. I’d be afraid of touching anything they touched, sharing serving utensils at a meal, and a pot luck? Forget it!
Good grief, what do the others do? Walk around with makeup on their hands until it gets wiped off on some other object? Or maybe they only use brushes and applicators, never their hands?
I had a roommate like that in college. Four of us were sharing an apartment and nothing was safe from her little hands. The girl with whom she shared a room came home to find the thief wearing her bra. She took my razor and helped herself to everyone’s food when she thought they were not looking.
We made it through the year with her because we did not want to have to find another roommate,but she was something else.
In this case, I think I would have asked to be moved when I found her using my things. Taking money was certainly the final straw.
I already don’t understand their assumption it is okay to take what they want, but then to move into the realm of personal effects like underwear and razors…>_<…. Even if it was only a bra, I would still feel strange considering that my bra contains sweat, among other things. But I guess that bodily fluids is a minor issue to consider when scoring free stuff?
Makes me wonder if she was stealing from others the whole time too and kept getting bounced from room to room? Or what kind of punishment she got for it from the school?
Who was willing to room with her? Stealing in front of you? She should have been thrown off the trip!
After the incident on the bus, I would have asked for a change of room the first time one of my personal items turned up missing – and been VERY clear as to why I was making the request. Otherwise, some other poor soul would end up with the same problem!
Did she not pack anything for herself on this trip, and just expect her traveling companions to provide everything she’d need?
If you were the same size, would she have stolen your clothes, as well?
Good grief!
It should not have been a situation of “I won’t room with her.” It should have been “Give me back my things, and send this thief home RIGHT NOW.” Or just call the police, and let her stay right there, while the rest of you travel on. Let her spend some time in a German jail.
My vacation “horror story:” Well, the one I can think of at the moment, at any rate.
We were living in Germany, at the time, and were going on a trip to Switzerland. It was my parents, me, and my friend. My friend and I were both in high school, at the time.
Well, we drove for hours, and finally reached the border, when my friend says, “I wonder if my Mom remembered to pack my passport?”
First, after much boggling at the thought of a teenager relying on his mother to pack his things for a trip, as well as the “You didn’t check before you left?” and “Why would you leave it in your suitcase, anyway? You’ll need it on hand at the border,” we finished searching his suitcase, and sure enough, it was not there.
We found a phone, and called his mother (at great expense), and she said, “Oh, yeah. I put your passport on your desk for you, so you’d be sure to see it and take it with you.”
So, we drove hours home, picked up the passport, and had to make the long drive back. We were about six hours late, and that’s just because my father drove like a mad man for the last three, cutting off a solid two hours, he was going so fast. I was terrified.
Other than that, though, it was a good trip. My friend was my friend for good reason, and we had a lot of fun. And he learned to always carry his passport on his person, whenever he was going anywhere near the border.
A mostly unrelated word of advice – make sure you don’t have any of those Kinder eggs coming back with you to the US. They are illegal and have caused many people great grief when US Customs has found even one such egg in their possession.
Which is odd because I know I’ve found places in the U.S. where I could buy them before (usually import stores). So the question remains: how did those stores get them past customs?
I bought something similar in Rome (it had costume jewelry in it rather than a toy) and had no problems with Customs. Though honestly I had no idea there was anything in them until I got home and ate one. — I knew enough Italian to know they were dark chocolate but not that they had anything in them. They seemed a little expensive but pretty much everything we bought in Rome was expensive.
This reminds me of an episode of Peep Show. Mark bought some pizza and beer for a work session he was having at home. He opened a box of pizza to find some missing and confronted his roommate Jez.
Jez explained that it was his friend Big Suze who had taken the pizza. Jez explained. “She’s rich, Mark. She doesn’t understand about taking people’s things.”
I wish I could say this sounds unreal, but sadly, I had a couple of roomates in high school who were exactly the same way. Spoiled, entitled brats who thought anything they wanted was theirs for the taking, simply because they wanted it.
Reminds me of some of the stories my mother tells me about her travels. She often takes those group tours to various countries or cruises. It never fails that she’ll have at least one or sometimes multiple difficult tour mates on each trip. Seems to be a given anytime you have a group of strangers together. Traveling with someone is definitely the way to get to know who they really are.
Two stories, both involving fling from NY to Florida for a cruise.
First story. We let the cruise line book our flight to Miami. They booked us on a flight the same day as the cruise. We assumed they left us more than enough time for us to collect our luggage at the airport and take the cruise line’s bus to the port. We assumed incorrectly, we were literally the last people to board the ship, with all of five minutes to find our cabin and drop off our carry-ons before we had to report for muster drill. All that tension and anxiety was not a good way to start a cruise. We found out later that several other passengers, who’d been on the same flight as us, did miss the boat, and had to be flown to the next port of call to meet the ship.
Three years later, and a good deal smarter, we booked our own flight for the day before the cruise. A friend of our drove us to the airport. I decided to do curbside check-in for our luggage. Good thing, too. My boyfriend put his passport on his dresser when he packed his suitcase, and forgot to throw it into his carry-on. He got back into the friend’s car and drove back to his house to get it. He barely made it back to the airport in time. The first time in my life that I was actually glad that our flight was delayed by 20 minutes.
The dumbest bit is that, in a lot of these instances, if the person would just ASK the answer would be “yeah, sure.”
Like in the evening they turn and say “Hey, roomie. Can I ask a favor? I must’ve left my toothpaste at the last place. Can I use yours tonight? I’ll run by the gift shop in the morning.” Admittedly, if the person is constantly needing to borrow/use stuff the goodwill will start drying up, but at least in my experience people tend to be pretty chill about lending stuff out so long as it isn’t abused.
Exactly! Most people are happy enough to share, if you just ask, first.
Many years ago I rented a room in a house my best friend owned. He rented another room to a couple that firmly believed in sharing everything, communal living etc etc.
Unfortunately all the sharing came from our end as they happily helped themselves to our food and toiletries. My best friend grabbed one of their beers and a slice of their pizza one afternoon and they went ballistic. It was alright to take our stuff but theirs was apparently untouchable.
We put a stop to the communal sharing after that which the couple found unfair. Thankfully they moved out a couple months later.
This actually reminds me of a question I wanted to put to you.
I moved into a dorm-style livng complex. My dorm is really just a box, big enough for a bed and a suitcase. Every floor has a big fridge all the inhabitants share. I buy milk every week for my breakfast and put it in there. Recently, I’ve noticed that the three containers didn’t seem to last as long as they should. I’m a bit of a scatterbrain, so I was willing to believe I was just forgetting which were mine, so I started marking the top with my initials. When they kept disappearing, I was willing to believe an overzealous cleaner had tossed them, as they’d been there a few days.
This morning, with one missing and one I’d never touched nearly empty, I got confirmation someone’s been stealing my milk. The nerve!
Does anyone have any ideas how to fight this? All I’ve come up with is, instead of discreetly initialling it, scrawling NOT YOURS all over to make it clear that it’s not communal property and can’t be mistaken. I also considered scaring them off with sabotaging it (I think a touch of vinegar would scare them off), but that seems awfully unethical.
And no, getting a little minifridge in my own room is not an option. There really is no room, and I need the single outlet to charge my laptop.
“Not Yours” on the milk carton, a big sign in BOLD letters on the fridge, and perhaps — if your building does this of course — stating the problem at a resident meeting or in the building newsletter or a general note in everyone’s door.
Can you shove your milk waaaaaaaaay to the back, behind everyone else’s stuff, to make it less easy to access?
I’d get a small craft birdcage (not the kind you’d hold a real bird in) and maybe put a small lock on the top. Even if you just put the lock on it for show as opposed to locking it for real, the obstacle alone may deter the thief.
This is very common in communal kitchens.
When I was a student I found that putting green or blue food colouring in the milk worked quite well. Most people are surprisingly squeamish about it!
Other options:
– Suggest to the other people on the floor that you start a milk-kitty – you all pay in, and buy milk to share (works if everyone is honest and uses roughly similar amounts)
– Buy a thermos flask and keep the flask in your room.
– buy a small insulated bag and keep the milk in that in your room
– find an opaque bottle or container and decant the milk into that – it makes it less obviously milk (people have to opn it to see what it is ) and more obviously persoanl rather than communal.
buy something like this – http://lockabox.com/pages/lockaboxs-special-features (or use tupperware and a couple of small padlocks to make something similar.
The food coloring is a genius idea!
I recommend getting either powdered milk, and mixing it with cold water at the time of use (it’s usually nonfat, but you can add powdered butter, if you want the milk fat), or else use some of that shelf-stable boxed milk, like Parmalat.
Start buying one small carton at a time. Less convenient but less to steal. Since you are sharing the fridge with a whole floor maybe you putting several cartons (not sure if you mean pints or gallons) might be taking up more than your share of space.
Also, they make fridge lockers. Small open air cages with a lock. If space isnt an issue get one of those to keep your items in.
Political Science, eh!
Your thief friend would make a great politician.
Well, I gotta share mine, then!
In 2001 I was a chaperone for some of the teens in our church to a major denominational event in Ohio. Adults consisted of the youth leader and her husband, myself and another adult friend, and six teens.
The first thing that happened was that the convention people had booked us to stay in dorm rooms at Ohio State…and they were filthy! The bathrooms were scummy…and for reasons we still don’t understand, the girls’ shower was in the boys’ section…
The youth leader, with the church treasurer’s blessing, got us rooms at a hotel for the rest of the week. In my room was my cousin and another girl…and it was the other girl, A, who ended up being the problem. Most of it wasn’t her fault, really. Her wallet was stolen, water was spilled on her (a whole try full!) by a waitress, she got sick, etc. Then, one night, when A and my cousin were swimming, one of the girls in the next room came for me (I was the only adult on hand at the moment.) I went into the next room to find the other girl, M, sobbing. I asked the other girl to go for a walk and then M told me what had happened: A’s mother was using the opportunity of the kids being away to spread terrible stories about M and her boyfriend and the rest of the family, some of it fueled by her daughter. Of course, this was passed onto the youth leaders, who were incensed, and that’s when I finally found out that A was already on probation because she and another girl had been caught vandalizing mailboxes, and were told one more incident and they would have to go before the governing board of the church.
I was SO glad to be going home at the end of the week.
Two vacation nightmares:
1. I was on a high school abroad trip with multiple mini-groups from different schools with different chaperones. It’s Tuesday so it must be Paris. Most of the kids thought it was one big mall with a happy hour.
One group was an older, extremely robust gentleman who was chaperoning two teen-aged girls. I went to their hotel room one day – to borrow/lend something, chat, I don’t know. This was decades ago when a teen-aged girl like myself could be naive enough not to realize (or to pretend not to realize) the full implications of seeing the two other teen-aged girls cuddling on a bed with a man of advanced middle age and porn pictures around.
2. I live in a major U.S. city that attracts tourists to the busiest business areas and commuting terminals. Invariably a handful of people will stand, blocking a doorway, blocking access, where rushed city-dwellers either on short and strict lunch breaks or tight commuting schedules can’t pass easily. Today was one example: a group of three or four adults stood blocking two doors – with their bodies and their luggage to the platform of one of the business commuter trains in the city. I tried to very nicely “warn” them that they were blocking the flow of human traffic, and there would be a flood of people coming in the next few minutes, suggesting that moving to the side might make things easier for them. Our city is not known for it’s polite disposition or patience with outsiders. I’ve had people try to “walk through” me, and I figured it was about to happen to them.
Well, what did one woman do? Argue with me. Vehemently. Angrily. She was about to take a train. I guess this made her special, and distinguished her from the other 200 people that were about to also take a train in the next half-hour. What she didn’t understand, I suppose, is that the platform served four or five different trains going on the same number of routes in any given half-hour.
Yay tourist season.